1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for the control of a home electronics system comprising a plurality of components.
2. Description of the Related Art
Home entertainment components such as TV, VCR, DVD and audio receiver are sold as individual products. Brands compete on the basis of features and other factors. Products incorporate standardized signal interfaces (RCA, Scart, etc.) to facilitate interconnection between brands. However, each product is essentially controlled as a standalone equipment with its own user interface and, usually, dedicated remote controller. The user of a home electronics system ends up with a host of remote controllers. To control a particular product, the user must locate the correct remote controller and remember which keys to press to invoke the desired function; indeed some functions require more than one product to be set-up, in turn requiring the use of more than one remote controller. Another issue is that as the number of product features increases, the tendency is for manufacturers to use display-based user interfaces so as to limit the number of keys on remote controllers; the result is that individual products (and their associated remote controllers) are increasingly operated using generic commands such as ‘menu’, ‘cursor_up’/_down/_left/_right, ‘OK’, etc. Thus there may be a duplication of generic commands across the set of remote controllers the user may possess; a duplication which has not been exploited.
To date, the universal remote control has become a popular means to control a plurality of products. However, these universal remote controls have the disadvantage that the user has to remember to change (product) mode in order to change control to another product.
International Patent Application No. WO 00/700578, assigned to the Assignee of present application, discloses a system and method for controlling multiple home electronics devices. It describes the use of a single remote control (e.g., the TV remote) to control a device controller which, in turn, controls other home devices in addition to the TV. In response to receiving commands from the remote control, the device controller generates and transmits commands suitable for controlling any of the home devices. A disadvantage of this system (and also of the universal remote control discussed earlier) is the requirement to involve the user in initialization and (as required, for example, when adding a device to the system) updating procedures to ensure that commands are correctly translated. This can be a significant burden for a user.